Serbian and Ottoman Armies Clash at Kosovo Field

On 15 June 1389, two large military forces confronted each other on Kosovo Field, roughly five kilometers northwest of modern Pristina. An invading Ottoman army under Sultan Murad I faced a Christian coalition led by Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović, the ruler of Moravian Serbia and the most prominent regional lord among the fragmented principalities of the former Serbian Empire. The confrontation followed years of escalating Ottoman expansion into the Balkans, which had already weakened the local nobility and brought several regional lords under Ottoman vassalage.

The coalition forces assembled by Prince Lazar relied primarily on his own Serbian soldiers, alongside contingents led by his son-in-law Vuk Branković and a Bosnian force dispatched by King Tvrtko I under the command of Vlatko Vuković. Modern historians debate the broader ethnic makeup and numbers of both forces. Estimates vary widely, but historians agree that Murad's army, which included Christian vassals obliged to provide military service, was considerably larger than Lazar's.